Innovative approaches have presented considerable opportunity to revolutionize medicine through providing more automated and/or remote treatment options in a variety of contexts. The objectives are to provide improved care and accelerated treatment delivery while increasing efficiency to keep costs down. With two way communication channels, the medical professionals can be apprised of the patient's condition without an office visit or invasive procedure, and medical devices can be remotely reprogrammed.
In an orthopedic treatment context, physical therapy can be performed, monitored and/or administered remotely relative to the clinician. An instrumented orthopedic system can prompt the patient for therapy, monitor the therapy, warn the patient of any dangerous conditions and/or record the patient's performance of the therapy for compliance monitoring and protocol evaluation. The instrumented orthopedic system can be designed to download therapy performance data with or without initial evaluation and/or upload protocol reprogramming. Suitable orthopedic parameters related to rehabilitation include, for example, stresses, range of motion, exerted energy levels, pulse, blood pressure, and the like.
Another area of significant remote monitoring and evaluation involves implantable cardiac devices. In particular, implantable pacemakers and cardiac defibrillators have been designed to transmit parameters external to the patient's body for communication to health care professionals, e.g. the appropriate physician. Functions relating to device operation can be communicated.